In February Paul Rée, passing through Genoa, stayed some days with his friend, who showed him his favourite walks and brought him to those rocky creeks "where in some six hundred years, some thousand years," he wrote gaily to Peter Gast, "they will raise a statue to the author of _The Dawn"_ Then Paul Rée went on to Rome, where Fräulein von Meysenbug was waiting for him. He had a curiosity to penetrate into the Wagnerian world there, which was greatly excited in expectation of _Parsifal;_ it was in July, at Bayreuth, that the Christian mystery was to be presented. Friedrich Nietzsche did not wish to accompany Paul Rée, and the approaching performance of the _Parsifal_ only made his ardour for work the more active. Had he not--he, too--a great work which he must ripen? Had he not to write his anti-Christian mystery, his poem of the Eternal Return? It was his constant thought. It procured him a happiness, thanks to which he could recall with less torturing regret the master of by-gone days. Richard Wagner seemed very far and very near; very far as regards his ideas, but what are ideas worth to a poet? Very near in sentiments, desires, lyrical emotion; and were not these the essential things? All disaccord between poets is only a question of shades, for they inhabit the same universe, they work with a like heart to give a significance and a supreme value to the movements of the human soul. Reading this page which Nietzsche then wrote, it is easier to understand the condition of his mind: "_Stellar Friendship._--We were friends, and we have become strangers to each other. Ah, yes; but it is well so, and we wish to hide nothing, to disguise nothing from one another; we have nothing to be ashamed of. We are two ships, each with a bourne and a way. By chance we have crossed paths; we have made holiday together--and then our two good ships have so tranquilly reposed in the one port and under the same sun, that it seemed as though they had both attained their bourne. But the all-powerful force of our mission has driven us afresh towards divers seas and suns--and perhaps we shall not meet, or recognise one another again: the divers seas and suns will have transformed us! We had to become strangers; a reason the more why we should mutually respect ourselves! No doubt there exists a far off, invisible and prodigious cycle which gives a common law to our little divagations: let us uplift ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short, our vision too feeble; we must content ourselves with this sublime possibility. And if we must be enemies upon earth, in spite of all we believe in our stellar friendship."